


Noted

by karygurl



Category: Seduce Me (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karygurl/pseuds/karygurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam learns to read with the help of post-it notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noted

It had been so long since Mika had learned to read that she was initially at a loss for how to teach Sam. She especially didn’t want to embarrass him, although that seemed inevitable; there weren’t a lot of books for a low reading level that didn’t involve cats in hats or some other cutesy animal.

The first step was teaching him letters, capitals and lowercase, and the sounds associated with each of them. It was mostly boring rote memorization, but luckily Sam picked it up faster than she anticipated, maybe just from seeing letters everywhere in his daily life in the human world.

Getting him to write was another story. When he had finally written down the alphabet from beginning to end for the first time by himself without needing to look, the combination of his smug little grin and the off-kilter, childish looking handwriting had her fighting back a giggle, and unfortunately she didn’t mask it before he caught on. She had hurried to explain to him that she hadn’t meant to insult him, but he didn’t believe her judging by the scowl that had taken over his expression. After that, he said he’d practice writing on his own. She hated not being able to help, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings again so she concentrated on getting him to read instead.

From there, it was putting the letters together that she struggled to teach him. He picked up how to spell their names and the names of his brothers quickly, though he did grumble about how “bullshit” it was that Matthew’s name had two t’s which tripped him up a little. Since children’s books were pretty much out of the question, instead, whenever he was playing a video game she read any and all text that crossed the screen, and turned on subtitles so that he could listen and read at the same time to pick up some context. She even taught him to use a dictionary (though he preferred her phone’s dictionary app, since it was faster) to look up unfamiliar words, or words he was pretty sure he knew but were such exceptions to the normal pronunciation rules that he couldn’t work them out right away.

Then one day, Mika had a minor stroke of brilliance, brought home a large pack of post -it notes, and got to work. Nearly everything got a label: furniture, appliances, clothing. Once she put them up, she never said a word about them, and Sam never mentioned them, like it was normal to live in a house with everything covered in sticky notes. She did notice though that often the notes would disappear, but sometimes they would stick around for a while. Maybe he was studying?

Once she ran out of objects to label, she started leaving other kinds of notes. Sometimes she would leave little stories or suggestions to see if he would pick up on them, like how she wanted to make her grandmother’s secret recipe brownies but didn’t have any buttermilk. (He brought some home after work and they made brownies that night.) Other times she’d try to expand his vocabulary and leave words he’d probably have to look up around something that she associated the word with. (She left a note with the word “callipygian” on top of his jeans. The next morning, it was tucked away in her own underwear drawer.)

Eventually his reading skills advanced to the point where she didn’t need the notes, but she still tried to leave at least one somewhere for him every day. She had gotten attached to finding ways to surprise him, or at least make him smile, even if she wasn’t around when he made the discovery.

One particular morning after a really rough exam at school, she bolted out of the classroom and parked on a nearby bench, rummaging through her backpack for gum or something, anything that could make the nervous burning pit in her stomach go away. In her search, she found that one of her favorite kinds of chocolate had mysteriously materialized in the front pouch of the backpack, and attached was a post-it note that simply read, “Good luck - I love you.”

The handwriting was still a little sloppy, a little unsure, but it was unmistakably his. She had left him a note the night before mentioning that she had a big test today, but she hadn’t expected anything like this. It was probably the only time she had ever been so happy to cry over her backpack.


End file.
